kind I ever had. It
was only used on great occasions. Usually we used a splint broom which
we made ourselves.

I used to do all the housework for a family of seven besides making
butter and taking care of the chickens. If help was short, I helped with
the milking, too. I made all the clothes the men wore. A tailor would
cut out their suits and then I would make them by hand. I made all their
shirts too. You should have seen the fancy bosomed shirts I made. Then I
knit the stocking and mittens for the whole family and warm woolen
scarfs for their necks. My husband used to go to bed tired to death and
leave me sitting up working. He always hated to leave me. Then he would
find me up no matter how early it was. He said I never slept. I didn't
have much time to waste that way. We lived on beautiful Silver Lake. In
season the pink lady-slippers grew in great patches and other flowers to
make the prairie gay.

For amusement we used to go visiting and always spent the day. We would
put the whole family into a sleigh or wagon and away we would go for an
outing. We had such kind neighbors--no one any better than the
other--all equal.

Mrs. E. A. Merrill--1853, Minneapolis.

My home was where the old Union station stood. In 1853 my father, Mr.
Keith, learned that the land near where the Franklin Avenue bridge now
is was to be thrown open to settlement. He loaded his wagon with lumber
and drove onto the piece of land he wanted and stayed there all night.
In the morning he built his home. In the afternoon the family moved in
and lived there for three years.

Mrs. Martha Thorne--1854.

We started from Davenport, Iowa, for Minnesota Territory in 1854. We had
expected to be only two weeks on the trip to the junction of the Blue
Earth and Minnesota rivers, but were six weeks on that terrible trip
with our ox teams. There had been so much rain that all dry land was a
swamp, all swamps lakes, and the lakes and rivers all over everywhere.
Sometimes we worked a whole day to get one hundred feet through one of
the sloughs. We would cut the tallest and coarsest rushes and grass and
pile in to make a road bed. We would seem to be in a sea, but finally
this trip ended as all trips, no matter how bad, must, and we came to
Lake Crystal where we were to stay.

Such a beautiful spot as it was, this home spot! We camped for three
weeks, living in our prairie schooner, while the men put up the wild
hay.

We built a log cabin with "chi